1. Technical Field
The following disclosure relates generally to techniques for providing information related to the assessment of a vendor's contribution to a large service agency and more particularly computing devices and methods to generate such information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computing devices generate and store information in physical memory. The information is typically stored as a set of digital data files. In a large service agency, such as a public office of motor vehicles or a large home building corporation, computing devices are used to store information data files related to vendors that provide goods and services to the large service agency. The data files may include any type of information related to the vendor. For example, the files may include names, telephone numbers, addresses, types of goods and services provided, prices, subjective notes related to past performance or future expectations, schedules, photographs, sound files, and any other information that a user of the computing device enters or that the computing device generates. In fact, the files stored by a computing device can represent nearly any conceivable type of information related to a vendor.
In some cases, multiple files contain information related to one vendor. For example, one file may have many telephone numbers, including the telephone numbers of a particular vendor. A different file may have many photographs, at least some of which are related to the same particular vendor. Still other files may store accounting information wherein at least some of the file entries of accounting information relate to the particular vendor.
Generally speaking, the volume of information related to a large service agency is stored in many computer files on one or more computing devices. The information may be stored in discrete files or the information may be consolidated in one or more computing databases. One common feature of the files, computing devices, and information discussed herein is that the information is too voluminous to reasonably be generated, maintained, and used without a computing device.